One of my favorite Jefferson Airplane songs, off of After Bathing at Baxters (1967). There's a lot of melisma in this song from Marty Balin and especially from Grace Slick. It's not the kind of melisma that has become so banal and over-used courtesy of Mariah Carey and American Idol. Check out what Slick does with her voice from around 2:43 to 2:45 on this song. Listening to Arab singers must have been an influence. Umm Kalthum? Bob Dylan did.
It's not just the pot, or the LSD.
The quality of the sound on this vid is pretty lousy, perhaps deliberately so. So go out and buy a decent copy already. Finally, isn't Jack Cassidy's bass solo, starting at 2:08, just to die for?
Other, random, Arab traces in the Airplane. From "White Rabbit," this lyric: "Tell them a hookah smoking caterpillar/Has given you the call."
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